progressive measures. He willingly recognized that children were
necessary, that the army required soldiers, and the factories workmen.
Only he also invoked the prudential duties of the higher classes, and
reasoned after the fashion of a man of wealth, a conservative clinging to
the fortune he has acquired.

Mathieu meanwhile ended by understanding the brutal truth: Capital is
compelled to favor the multiplication of lives foredoomed to
wretchedness; in spite of everything it must stimulate the prolificness
of the wage-earning classes, in order that its profits may continue. The
law is that there must always be an excess of children in order that
there may be enough cheap workers. Then also speculation on the wages'
ratio wrests all nobility from labor, which is regarded as the worst
misfortune a man can be condemned to, when in reality it is the most
precious of boons. Such, then, is the cancer preying upon mankind. In
countries of political equality and economical inequality the capitalist
regime, the faulty distribution of wealth, at once restrains and
precipitates the birth-rate by perpetually increasing the wrongful
apportionment of means. On one side are the rich folk with "only" sons,
who continually increase their fortunes; on the other, the poor folk,
who, by reason of their unrestrained prolificness, see the little they
possess crumble yet more and more. If labor be honored to-morrow, if a
just apportionment of wealth be arrived at, equilibrium will be restored.
Otherwise social revolution lies at the end of the road.

But Beauchene, in his triumphant manner, tried to show that he possessed
great breadth of mind; he admitted the disquieting strides of a decrease
of population, and denounced the causes of it--alcoholism, militarism,
excessive mortality among infants, and other numerous matters. Then he
indicated remedies; first, reductions in taxation, fiscal means in which